In the middle of summer, you dread wearing a short sleeved shirt in your air conditioned office, while you can?t wait to get to the next event, where you can dress in a long sleeved shirt, with a vest, wool coat, hat, and carry around 40 or 50 pounds of bulky gear on your back, while firing away with your musket, and then relaxing next to your cookfire.

Re. Being asked if you are Amish.... kind of a reverse version.... While traveling through Indiana Amish country to make a pit stop at a convenience store, several local Amish guys were buying sandwiches to take to a construction site they were working on, were giving me the "eye", as I was in my civilian colonial clothes, heading to an event. One obviously curious, approached me to ask, "Sir, are you a... 'reenactor' ?" Replying that I was, he smiled quite broadly and said " Well that explains it... because you know, we get asked that all the time, by people passing through!"

That's great! I've never been asked if I was Amish (I do WWI and WWII mostly), but I have been asked if I was a "Coonfederate" this, while wearing a WWI German uniform... then, when we explained to the clerk that it was WWI German, he said, "Oh ya mean with Hitler?" "No", said we, that was WWII... separate wars... "Oh", said he, "ah didn't know that... I larned somethin' different taday" (This was in Ohio... which explains it) and yes, this was how he talked.